Instinctively obedient, Alice did so. Already through the doctor's hands she felt a warm current passing up her arms and into her body, but when she met his steady grey eyes the magnetism of the life-power he was giving her tingled throughout her entire frame. The brightness returned to her eyes, the colour of health flushed her cheeks: her nerves ceased to thrill with pain, and her muscles grew strong. In silent astonishment Montrose looked at the rapid transformation which was taking place under his eyes. From a colourless statue, the girl warmed into rosy life, and when Eberstein dropped her hands she sprang to her feet to stand in the shaft of sunlight which had broken through the heavy clouds of the autumnal day.
"Oh, I feel that I have been born again to a more splendid life," she cried in ecstasy, and looked as though she were transfigured, which certainly was the case. "Oh, thank you, doctor: thank you: thank you. How did you do it?"
"Yes. How did you do it?" asked Douglas, also intensely curious.
"I suppose you would call it a case of hypnotic suggestion," smiled Eberstein, putting his explanation in simple words which they could understand. "I have stimulated Alice's will to command the inflowing of the life-currents from the vital body into the physical, and have added a trifle of my own strength, which I can well spare."
"It is wonderful: wonderful," cried Alice, radiant with unusual life, and smiling like the goddess of spring.
"All things are wonderful, because all things are God. He manifests in the many. Thank Him, my child!"
Alice was silent for a moment and breathed an inward prayer of profound gratitude, which was echoed in the thoughts of her lover. Then she descended to earth and apologised for the absence of her father. "He went to see if Don Pablo was better, and will be back to luncheon. That was the message he sent up to my room."
"I quite understand," said Eberstein, nodding gravely. "Of course Don Pablo is an old man, and has not much strength."
"You could give it to him," said Alice, rejoicing in her glorious vitality.